1. Notice he worked climate change into his victory speech

It was never discussed once -- not one word -- during the campaign. Shame on those debate moderators for not bringing it up. If not for Hurricane Sandy, nothing would happen. But now, IMHO, there is a good chance that it will at least be discussed openly. I don't expect the reddest states to ever get it. But as we saw, Florida, NC, and VA are definitely winnable -- and really essential to both parties. These are all states that should get it because they experience this first hand. And of course NY and NJ are in the game now.

3. alternatively

you could call it politically calculating.

And if he were to bring it up despite the risks, you could call it "courageous", not "dumb". Arguably that was the case with abortion and gay marriage, both of which dems normally shy away from but which Obama embraced.

4. I could find no firearm policy on ANY of my Democratic candidates this year.

Unlike the 2010 election, where most of my Democratic candidates had NRA rankings, and all of them except one had high marks, this year only one of my Democratic candidates was even listed by the NRA, and that candidate refused to answer the NRA-PVF survey, resulting in a "?" grade.

I researched all of my Democratic candidates through Google and their web sites, and none of them mentioned firearms at all.

Sadly, no Democratic candidates won their elections here. Our one Democratic incumbent lost her seat. I don't think we have any Democrats in office now in Alabama.

5. Unfortunately, you're right. Add climate change too.

Voters just can't handle rational intelligent conversation about those issues during a presidential election year, especially with the political ad onslaught Citizen's United has created. The NRA just has too much power and is so effective in energizing their particular group of nut cases.

And as depressing as it is, the Republicans have been extremely effective in mystifying climate science over the years, especially during the Bush admin. These are two areas that the Democratic party has really failed to gain ground on.

Add climate change to the list of things that were avoided for practical reasons, though it's a bit depressing to think that its such a controversial and decisive issue.

6. He openly advocated renewing the assault weapons ban

Or did you forget that? On October 16, at the debate:

President Obama tonight said he’s interested in seeing an assault weapons ban reintroduced, breaking his silence on the legislation, which has persisted in spite of at least five mass shootings during his term.
At the end of a long answer to the question, “What has your administration done or planned to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?” Obama said this:
“My belief is that, (A), we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement.
“But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced. But part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence. Because frankly, in my home town of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap hand guns.”